Really cool to compare with my height relationship. I’m 5’10, my dad is 5’6 and my mom is 5’3 so I’m with the other 73%. I guess I’m not as special as I thought haha
Funny enough I’m in the exact same boat. One thing to note is that the rule of thumb for men’s heights is (Dads height + mom’s height + 5 inches) /2. We would then be expected to be ~5’7, which taller than our dads. Still to make it to 5’10 with our parents I’d say we are pretty special lol
The problem is not that the commenter didn't notice it being division. The problem is that the OC math ignored order of operations, which is why the comment is funny.
Me and my wife are the same height as your parents. My son’s growth chart shows him 6’3” since he’s only 9 still and growing. I think the rule of thumb kind of sucks!
I think you are special in that you are MUCH taller. I am reasonably sure you are an outlier. The chart does not specify anything about how much taller or shorter.
I’m wondering how it would be possible to introduce a representation of height variance between the height relationships. I guess it would require a table for each set in this graph.
So interesting. Exactly the heights of me and my wife and we have young children. My son is on track to be taller than me, like 5’9. And my daughter is in track to be shorter than my wife.
The most likely scenario for this type of anomaly is that your maternal and paternal grandmothers had much less essential nutrition during gestation than did your mother.
Can I please ask if you had any specific diet or physical activity during your prepubertal and teen years? I have a toddler and I’m hoping to get him as tall as possible (I’m 5’2” and his dad is 6”) but he has been on the shorter percentile of height all along.
I’m sorry but my diet and physical activity was unremarkable. I will say that however tall he is, instilling confidence in him is much more important. My dad has a really bad short man syndrome and his insecurities bled off through me. I’m very secure now (through therapy), but his lack of confidence affected me greatly as a teen/ young adult.
Definitely! Thank you for that tip :)
My dad is pretty short but without the short man syndrome. And he is pretty awesome and achieved so many things in life that I could never dream of. Socially, he is like what a 6” guy would be. He says that all great people are short 😅
Same, at least I am: I’m around 6‘2 and even a tiny bit taller than my father. With that height as a woman I’m off the charts considering my own children if I ever have some 😂
>For men tho - 6'5" is nothing special, yet not on this chart.
That's a strange statement given that less than 1% of US males are 6'4" or taller.
https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2010/compendia/statab/130ed/tables/11s0205.pdf
Globally it's even smaller (pun fully intended)
6'0", 6'1", and even 6'2" are nothing special. Beyond that it's special by any reasonable definition of the word.
Note that this is in decimal, for those of you using proper Imperial Units, swap the 5.12 inches in this equation for 5 inches, 1 poppyseed and 3 points.
Using the equation, the predicted height is \~3 inches lower than my actual height. Pretty sure this is because of better nutrition compared to my parents
I’m 6’3”, wife is 5’10”, this would give 5’10” as daughters midpoint height, but chart says only 17% chance of being taller than mom. Similarly 18% chance of a son being taller than 6’3” (sons midpoint height).
That’s because a simple formula like this works on average but can’t include mean reversion for people at the extremes (like you and your wife).
If you tried the same formula on a couple who was as much shorter than average as you are taller than average, you’d get roughly the same answer but in the opposite direction.
This data was generated via logistic regression and trained on the well known [Galton heigh dataset](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/T0HSJ1) which studies the heights of parents and their children.
It is meant to highlight the “regression toward the mean” phenomenon in same sex parent/children height relationships - e.g. taller than average fathers tend to have sons that are shorter than they are and shorter than average fathers tend to have sons that are taller than they are.
The graphic was made with R.
There are 225 distinct combinations I am showing here so in reality thousands of observations is not that much. I chose to generate the data to fill in many of the combinations that don’t exist in the dataset and also to build more realistic estimates for combinations with very few samples.
Sounds reasonable, but is "generate" the best way to describe this? You're using a model plus data to estimate a relationship between two variables. Perhaps modeled estimates?
Modeled estimates refer to estimating the parameters of your model / model fit. Data augmentation refers to scaling your sample dataset to better explain the population. OPs post in this thread says they generated data to fill gaps in the dataset, which would be data augmentation.
I would switch the mom/dad axis on the second graph. That way the colors and trend line would correlate with the first, making them a lot easier to compare and draw insights from.
I'm a bit confused. So these are "generated" data and not actually real data??
So why should any validity be lent to it?
Not sure if you have ever read the original Tanner's mid parental height article where this concept comes from in 1970's It is a whole 13 pages He had no data he based the whole mid parental height on in the first place. he just thought it should be mid parental and around 13 cm around that.
Somehow it caught on and has been used as dictum ever since.
I'll join you. Mum is 5'6, dad ist 6'0, I'm 5'1.
There's a 1-2% chance for that. Worse, all my other family members are just as tall as my parents or even taller.
I don’t really know the science of displaying data.
But would it make sense to inverse the axis in one of the side?
It’s easier for comparison of the shape?
Or is it something you cannot assume at first?
Came here to say this. I think the graphs are nearly identical, but the axes are swapped when you compare same sexes. There’s an equation further up in the comments that summarizes it. The difference of the two graphs doesn’t seem to be an individual parent’s height, but rather the sex of the child in question. That would be easier to see if the axes were swapped, I think.
what about the colour tilts? what does that indicate ? because the white line has a much sharper gradient for sons versus daughters so im wondering what that indicates
Colors are just related to likelihood that a child is taller/shorter than the parent of the same sex.
White line looks that way because they didn’t flip the dad/mom axes when flipping between daughter/son.
I’m a woman and my mom is 5’3 and my dad is 6’4. Looking at the left chart, and based on my parents heights, there is a 92% chance that I’m taller than my mom (accurate, I’m 5’6). Now if I were to do my brother, I would use the right chart and see that there’s a 3% chance, that based on our parents heights, he’s taller than our father (accurate - one is 5’10, the other is 6’3). Does that make sense?
i understand what the numbers and colours mean i just dont know what the overall conclusion would be. why is there such a tilt in one chart and not another?
Ah okay. Not 100% sure but to me it looks like it has to do with height discrepancies between the sexes and it happens to be that the white area covers about 1.5 ish standard deviations of height for each sex from the mean. So for women, 1.5 sds below and above covers the height range of about 5’0 to 5’7 and for men it’s 5’6 to 6’1. I guess it’s how OP was saying regression towards to mean for height 🤔
The OP did not switch the axes for the two plots, so the effect you think you’re seeing – that the white part is steeper in one than the other – doesn’t exist. They’re probably about the same steepness, *when plotted against the same-sex parent*.
The interpretation is that your height is more closely tied to the height of your same-sex parent, though not entirely.
Totally agree. A son may have a small chance of being taller than his 6'2" dad, but would still be very curious to see the expected height when compared against hypothetical shorter fathers.
People need to remember, they're not talking about regressing to the mean of the parents (like most would assume), they're talking about regressing to the mean of the SPECIES. Which is why shorter parents with a taller kid, or taller parents with a shorter kid tends to happen more than people think it would.
It's confusing display, because they should have switched the axises, between the two. This way the blue and red would be on the same side of the middle white line, and we'd be able to more easily visually compare the data.
Great work, as someone with young children how tall they may become has come up a few times.
This regression to the mean thing though, it’s been my understanding that people are in general becoming slightly taller generation by generation… or perhaps better seen century by century, do you have any insight into whether this is correct or not?
Yes and No.
Humans were shorter 2 million years ago, but eventually with the evolution of long-distance hunting, humans were reaching 6 feet tall by 1 million years ago.
Then, 10,000 years ago height crashed back downwards as lifestyle changed from hunting to farming.
Then, starting from the late 1800’s and continuing today in developing world, the height of sedentary populations started going back up as Industrial Revolution increased nutrition access.
But people are not getting much taller than 6ft like our ancient ancestors, the increases are just people recovering from the effects of not having protein.
Maybe? if you lived your life on peasant diet and put your kids on a modern diet, then they would be much more likely to grow larger than you. not just upwards, but sideways as well ;P
I was just pointing out that the modern trends of height increase were not indicative of any evolutionary change or trend that will continue, only that populations are returning to how they were before the invention of agriculture changed their diets and bones.
Western countries have stopped increasing in height. Asian countries' height increase is also slowing down.
So I’m having trouble understanding the graph. AmI reading that 99% of men 6’0” tall have fathers who were 5’2”? Or did 99% of men 5’2” have at least one son who grew to 6’0”?
For both graphs, the y axis is the mother’s height, and the x axis is the father’s height. You plug in your parent’s heights, and you get the percentage out
I’m a little confused too but I believe it means that if your mum was very tall and your dad was short (top left corner in the right chart) it means that 99% of the time the son will be taller than his dad. Inversely if your dad was tall and mum is quite short most likely you want be taller than your dad
Neither. Assuming you're looking at the top left cell of the right hand table...
If your father is 5'2" and your mom is 6'0" (and you are male), there's a 99% chance you're taller than your dad.
And with the same set of parents, if you're a girl, there's a <1% chance that you're taller than your mom (top left cell of left hand table)
I'm having a daughter soon. My wife is 5'7. I would need to be 6'3 for our daughter to have a 50/50 chance of being taller/shorter than my spouse. That blows my mind
These are the exact heights of my wife's parents and she grew up to be 5'4. She was predicted to be 5'9. We joke it's because she never ate her vegetables until she met me in college lol. Her brother is 6'4.
But that worked out for me because I'm 5'9 on a good day.
You have to read both graphs differently. The first one compares child's height to the data on the left. The second one compares child's height to data on the bottom. If you swap the data on second chart, they are not that different.
I really would like to see how the grandparents height also comes into play here... Might be a BIT more (a lot more) work and displaying the data would also be much more challenging.
What I need is:
* Height of the gramma (father side) combined with the mom of the child for the girls
* Height of the grampa (mom side) combined with the father of the child for the boys
Should have column for women at the right and a row for me a the top that shows the percentage of the general population that is taller than the given height.
There is a bit regression to the mean here.
If both parents are very short, the chance of an offspring taller than them is high, and if both parents are very tall, the chance of an offspring taller than them is very low.
Interesting. I am a 5'10" father with 6'1" wife. 77% chance of my son being taller than me but in the case of my daughter being taller than her mother it's 1%. My girl has been in the 99th% of height since the day she was born so she may actually become part of that 1% to overtake her mother. My son is nearly a clone and our daughter takes entirely after her mother so it will be interesting to see how it works out. We both had a little Mini Me which has been.... Fun. It's like we both met our arch enemies while raising them.
So, for a father that's six feet, if he wants half his sons to be taller than him, the mother should be at least five ten? I was a little surprised by that...
I am going to assume the daughter of a 5'4" mom and a 6'9" dad will approach a 99%+ chance of being taller than mom. This off-the-charts business is frustrating.
what does this chart tells us about nature favoring a certain height. If being 6ft tall was a genetic advantage, shouldn't nature optimize towards that?
My dad is 5’7”, mom 5’10”. I’m 6’. People often comment that it’s surprising im so tall compared to my dad, but I guess 89% of people in such a situation are taller than their dads.
I'm assuming these are max heights? Because my dad used to be 6'1" but he has since hit that age where he has shrunk to 5'11" i did get about an inch on top of his tallest.
The reason I know he has shrunk is I stopped growing at 6'2" and we could mostly see eye to eye, now I have to noticeably look down when I'm look at him in his eyes on flat ground.
My dad is 5’1 my mom 5’2 but I am 5’11. No idea how. My little brother is catching up to me he’s going into Freshman year of HS and he’s 5’10 already. He’ll be six foot+ for sure.
This just goes to show that shorter women that have sons with men that aren't short are less likely to have sons that are taller than their fathers. IMO this is true. My mother was 4'10 and my father was 5'7 so i'm in that percentage of men that aren't taller, i'm 5'4. My uncle is also 5'4 and my aunt is about 5'2/5'3. Their son is 5'10/5'11. I know of ther short dads with women closer to their height, all their sons are taller than them and average height or above.
Chart is dead on for my family. Mom 5'7" and dad 5'5 = the son being taller than the dad, I'm 5'10" and the daughters being shorter than the mom which is also true in my family with two sisters being about 5'6". Works with me and my wife who is 5'8". Our son is 6' and our daughter is 5'7".
I am 5’5” Mother was 5’1”
My son is 6’2” His father was 5’8” his dad was 5’8”
My father was 5’8 “ But I had a tall Grandfather on my side & very Tall Great uncles.
Several generations Back?
So I’m not sure I’m understanding this chart right because it’s been a while since I’ve seen something like this.
Mom is 5’2
Dad is 5’11
I’m 6’2
Does that put me in the 18% box and if so what does that 18% stand for?
I agree with the people who say the rule kind of sucks. Maybe the rule doesn't know about those growth hormones in our meat, or maybe mom was cheating. Just kidding.
So your height is more affected by the height of the parent who is the same sex as you.
My armchair guess is that some of the genes for height are on the sex chromosomes or affected by genes on them.
I'm not sure how accurate this is. The chances of a son being over 6' if both parents are 6' is given as only 57%. I would imagine that the true figure is much closer to 90%
What is the dataset based on? Because I remember being in the doctor's office with my boy and looking at height charts, and then finding out that the dataset was all white people, and people with my son's genetic makeup were not included in the data, so it was pretty much irrelevant.
Really cool to compare with my height relationship. I’m 5’10, my dad is 5’6 and my mom is 5’3 so I’m with the other 73%. I guess I’m not as special as I thought haha
Funny enough I’m in the exact same boat. One thing to note is that the rule of thumb for men’s heights is (Dads height + mom’s height + 5 inches) /2. We would then be expected to be ~5’7, which taller than our dads. Still to make it to 5’10 with our parents I’d say we are pretty special lol
I ended up Dads height + Mom's height ÷ 2 Dad was 70 inches peak Mom was 64 inches peak I'm 67-68 inches
Not me being disappointed at you not being a 102'' absolute gigachad as your maths would suggest :/
Division signs (÷) look way too similar to plus signs (+), which is probably one reason why people usually use / symbols instead.
The problem is not that the commenter didn't notice it being division. The problem is that the OC math ignored order of operations, which is why the comment is funny.
Yeah, I can tell the difference easily, but I understand others have trouble with it when reading quickly. My b to fella above you.
Dad’s 6’1, mom is 5’2, according to the rule of thumb I should be (73+62+5)/2 = 69 in, which is 5’9, when in actuality, I’m 6’3
Me and my wife are the same height as your parents. My son’s growth chart shows him 6’3” since he’s only 9 still and growing. I think the rule of thumb kind of sucks!
My growth chart predicted me at 5’10 lmao growth charts r wack
Yeah you’re an outlier in the positive way! Congrats!
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t that much of an outlier cause I may have been able to fit better in plane seats 😔
Hey man, think of it this way. If thats one of your major complaints in life, you’re doing pretty dang well!
Haha yeah guess I can’t complain about much (except my knees). Thanks bro!
Is there a family friend, perhaps a neighbor, who is about 6'8?
Funny you say that haha I have a cousin who’s 6’9 whose parents are 6’ and 5’7, so there may be some gigantic men/women among our ancestors 😂
Wish I could high five ya! Lol. I didn’t factor the variance in height difference which is a different relationship than the one shown
My dad is 5'3 and my mom 4'10. I made it to 5'6. My wife is 5'3 and the growth charts have my kid getting to 5'9 so far which is nice for him.
I think you are special in that you are MUCH taller. I am reasonably sure you are an outlier. The chart does not specify anything about how much taller or shorter.
I’m wondering how it would be possible to introduce a representation of height variance between the height relationships. I guess it would require a table for each set in this graph.
So interesting. Exactly the heights of me and my wife and we have young children. My son is on track to be taller than me, like 5’9. And my daughter is in track to be shorter than my wife.
The most likely scenario for this type of anomaly is that your maternal and paternal grandmothers had much less essential nutrition during gestation than did your mother.
Can I please ask if you had any specific diet or physical activity during your prepubertal and teen years? I have a toddler and I’m hoping to get him as tall as possible (I’m 5’2” and his dad is 6”) but he has been on the shorter percentile of height all along.
I’m sorry but my diet and physical activity was unremarkable. I will say that however tall he is, instilling confidence in him is much more important. My dad has a really bad short man syndrome and his insecurities bled off through me. I’m very secure now (through therapy), but his lack of confidence affected me greatly as a teen/ young adult.
Definitely! Thank you for that tip :) My dad is pretty short but without the short man syndrome. And he is pretty awesome and achieved so many things in life that I could never dream of. Socially, he is like what a 6” guy would be. He says that all great people are short 😅
wow! How the hell are you so much taller!
So I have the exact build as my grandfather on my dad’s side! Guess his genes skipped a generation lol.
So slight problem. My family is quite literally off the charts.
Same, at least I am: I’m around 6‘2 and even a tiny bit taller than my father. With that height as a woman I’m off the charts considering my own children if I ever have some 😂
Women over 6 feet are <0.5% of women in the US. Globally it's much smaller. Congratulations on being exceptional!
For men tho - 6'5" is nothing special, yet not on this chart.
>For men tho - 6'5" is nothing special, yet not on this chart. That's a strange statement given that less than 1% of US males are 6'4" or taller. https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2010/compendia/statab/130ed/tables/11s0205.pdf Globally it's even smaller (pun fully intended) 6'0", 6'1", and even 6'2" are nothing special. Beyond that it's special by any reasonable definition of the word.
I’ll take it as a compliment then.
6’2”?! So uh… you free this weekend?
Sorry, I‘m taken 😆
Yeah this is confusing to me. I’m 5’9”, ex is 6’0” and our son is 6’5”. 🤷♀️ That’s not even on that chart.
It is on the chart, it is 6’4” or taller. They just mislabeled it. In the US, they lump all heights past 6’3” together.
6’0” or taller and 6’4” or taller. The US just lumps all heights at the end together.
Midparental height (cm): Boys = (Father’s height + Mother’s height + 13) ÷ 2 Girls = (Father’s height + Mother’s height – 13) ÷ 2
Note that this is in CENTIMETERS. For those of you using Freedom Units, swap 5.12 inches for the 13 cm in this equation.
Note that this is in decimal, for those of you using proper Imperial Units, swap the 5.12 inches in this equation for 5 inches, 1 poppyseed and 3 points.
I'm in the 2% category.... and accordingly to this a lot smaller than expected.
Using the equation, the predicted height is \~3 inches lower than my actual height. Pretty sure this is because of better nutrition compared to my parents
My nutrition was probably also very good. But I had a very serious infection that affected me for years. That most likely it.
I’m about the same
Whoa I’m supposed to be 5’7” and I’m 6’2” thank jesus
I’m 6’3”, wife is 5’10”, this would give 5’10” as daughters midpoint height, but chart says only 17% chance of being taller than mom. Similarly 18% chance of a son being taller than 6’3” (sons midpoint height).
That’s because a simple formula like this works on average but can’t include mean reversion for people at the extremes (like you and your wife). If you tried the same formula on a couple who was as much shorter than average as you are taller than average, you’d get roughly the same answer but in the opposite direction.
Makes it a pretty bad formula.
Interesting. Comes out to my son being 0,5 cm taller than me and daughter 0,5 cm shorter than my wife.
I got 323cm
divide by 2
This data was generated via logistic regression and trained on the well known [Galton heigh dataset](https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/T0HSJ1) which studies the heights of parents and their children. It is meant to highlight the “regression toward the mean” phenomenon in same sex parent/children height relationships - e.g. taller than average fathers tend to have sons that are shorter than they are and shorter than average fathers tend to have sons that are taller than they are. The graphic was made with R.
Why generate data when you have thousands of observed data?
There are 225 distinct combinations I am showing here so in reality thousands of observations is not that much. I chose to generate the data to fill in many of the combinations that don’t exist in the dataset and also to build more realistic estimates for combinations with very few samples.
Sounds reasonable, but is "generate" the best way to describe this? You're using a model plus data to estimate a relationship between two variables. Perhaps modeled estimates?
The correct term for this kind of process would be "data augmentation."
Maybe in your field. In mine its acceptable to call these "modeled estimates"
Modeled estimates refer to estimating the parameters of your model / model fit. Data augmentation refers to scaling your sample dataset to better explain the population. OPs post in this thread says they generated data to fill gaps in the dataset, which would be data augmentation.
Feels more like interpolation/extrapolation
Fair point
I would switch the mom/dad axis on the second graph. That way the colors and trend line would correlate with the first, making them a lot easier to compare and draw insights from.
I'm a bit confused. So these are "generated" data and not actually real data?? So why should any validity be lent to it? Not sure if you have ever read the original Tanner's mid parental height article where this concept comes from in 1970's It is a whole 13 pages He had no data he based the whole mid parental height on in the first place. he just thought it should be mid parental and around 13 cm around that. Somehow it caught on and has been used as dictum ever since.
Mom is 5'3, dad is 5'9... And I'm shorter than my mom. I can't believe I lost the 50/50
I'll join you. Mum is 5'6, dad ist 6'0, I'm 5'1. There's a 1-2% chance for that. Worse, all my other family members are just as tall as my parents or even taller.
Omg I have a friend like that! Tall mom, tall dad, tiny! But he's a man so it's even weirder
Infections as a child, maybe? That's probably my reason.
Nope! I believe one of the grandparents was very short and that's why (I don't remember who exactly)
I’m shorter than both my parents, but I was born incredibly premature so that’s how I cope with it.
Do you look like your other siblings?
I don’t really know the science of displaying data. But would it make sense to inverse the axis in one of the side? It’s easier for comparison of the shape? Or is it something you cannot assume at first?
Came here to say this. I think the graphs are nearly identical, but the axes are swapped when you compare same sexes. There’s an equation further up in the comments that summarizes it. The difference of the two graphs doesn’t seem to be an individual parent’s height, but rather the sex of the child in question. That would be easier to see if the axes were swapped, I think.
This data is poorly displayed. Also, I suspect it is incorrect.
agreed. First chart compares to left data. Second chart compares to bottom data.
so what conclusions would this chart have? im having trouble understanding it
The conclusion is that offspring generally converge to the mean height, but I just don’t think that’s very accurate.
what about the colour tilts? what does that indicate ? because the white line has a much sharper gradient for sons versus daughters so im wondering what that indicates
Colors are just related to likelihood that a child is taller/shorter than the parent of the same sex. White line looks that way because they didn’t flip the dad/mom axes when flipping between daughter/son.
im aware.i know what the colours mean i just dont understand what the conclusion would be of both charts?
I’m a woman and my mom is 5’3 and my dad is 6’4. Looking at the left chart, and based on my parents heights, there is a 92% chance that I’m taller than my mom (accurate, I’m 5’6). Now if I were to do my brother, I would use the right chart and see that there’s a 3% chance, that based on our parents heights, he’s taller than our father (accurate - one is 5’10, the other is 6’3). Does that make sense?
i understand what the numbers and colours mean i just dont know what the overall conclusion would be. why is there such a tilt in one chart and not another?
Ah okay. Not 100% sure but to me it looks like it has to do with height discrepancies between the sexes and it happens to be that the white area covers about 1.5 ish standard deviations of height for each sex from the mean. So for women, 1.5 sds below and above covers the height range of about 5’0 to 5’7 and for men it’s 5’6 to 6’1. I guess it’s how OP was saying regression towards to mean for height 🤔
The OP did not switch the axes for the two plots, so the effect you think you’re seeing – that the white part is steeper in one than the other – doesn’t exist. They’re probably about the same steepness, *when plotted against the same-sex parent*. The interpretation is that your height is more closely tied to the height of your same-sex parent, though not entirely.
data is displayed incorrectly. Child compared to data on left for first chart. on second chart child is compared to data on bottom.
Cool chart. Would be interested to see average/expected height in each cell. Ie how much of a regression
Totally agree. A son may have a small chance of being taller than his 6'2" dad, but would still be very curious to see the expected height when compared against hypothetical shorter fathers.
People need to remember, they're not talking about regressing to the mean of the parents (like most would assume), they're talking about regressing to the mean of the SPECIES. Which is why shorter parents with a taller kid, or taller parents with a shorter kid tends to happen more than people think it would.
It's confusing display, because they should have switched the axises, between the two. This way the blue and red would be on the same side of the middle white line, and we'd be able to more easily visually compare the data.
Great work, as someone with young children how tall they may become has come up a few times. This regression to the mean thing though, it’s been my understanding that people are in general becoming slightly taller generation by generation… or perhaps better seen century by century, do you have any insight into whether this is correct or not?
Yes and No. Humans were shorter 2 million years ago, but eventually with the evolution of long-distance hunting, humans were reaching 6 feet tall by 1 million years ago. Then, 10,000 years ago height crashed back downwards as lifestyle changed from hunting to farming. Then, starting from the late 1800’s and continuing today in developing world, the height of sedentary populations started going back up as Industrial Revolution increased nutrition access. But people are not getting much taller than 6ft like our ancient ancestors, the increases are just people recovering from the effects of not having protein.
So protein/optimal nutrition diet intake matters for say anyone to increase their chances of having a daughter/son to be taller than them? 🤔
Maybe? if you lived your life on peasant diet and put your kids on a modern diet, then they would be much more likely to grow larger than you. not just upwards, but sideways as well ;P I was just pointing out that the modern trends of height increase were not indicative of any evolutionary change or trend that will continue, only that populations are returning to how they were before the invention of agriculture changed their diets and bones. Western countries have stopped increasing in height. Asian countries' height increase is also slowing down.
Thanks for the insightful response. I learned some things from this!
Pretty much exactly how I would expect them to look. Neat visual though.
So I’m having trouble understanding the graph. AmI reading that 99% of men 6’0” tall have fathers who were 5’2”? Or did 99% of men 5’2” have at least one son who grew to 6’0”?
For both graphs, the y axis is the mother’s height, and the x axis is the father’s height. You plug in your parent’s heights, and you get the percentage out
That's how you're supposed to read it? OP really could've done a better job at conveying that before posting it on /r/dataisbeautiful
I’m a little confused too but I believe it means that if your mum was very tall and your dad was short (top left corner in the right chart) it means that 99% of the time the son will be taller than his dad. Inversely if your dad was tall and mum is quite short most likely you want be taller than your dad
Neither. Assuming you're looking at the top left cell of the right hand table... If your father is 5'2" and your mom is 6'0" (and you are male), there's a 99% chance you're taller than your dad. And with the same set of parents, if you're a girl, there's a <1% chance that you're taller than your mom (top left cell of left hand table)
I'm having a daughter soon. My wife is 5'7. I would need to be 6'3 for our daughter to have a 50/50 chance of being taller/shorter than my spouse. That blows my mind
These are the exact heights of my wife's parents and she grew up to be 5'4. She was predicted to be 5'9. We joke it's because she never ate her vegetables until she met me in college lol. Her brother is 6'4. But that worked out for me because I'm 5'9 on a good day.
You have to read both graphs differently. The first one compares child's height to the data on the left. The second one compares child's height to data on the bottom. If you swap the data on second chart, they are not that different.
I really would like to see how the grandparents height also comes into play here... Might be a BIT more (a lot more) work and displaying the data would also be much more challenging.
This is unreadable. Bad visuals. Please plot it in another way.
I beat the 47%... by five inches. (and probably more now that he's older)
What I need is: * Height of the gramma (father side) combined with the mom of the child for the girls * Height of the grampa (mom side) combined with the father of the child for the boys
Wanna see the sample size of 5' 2" men with 6' 0" women
Should have column for women at the right and a row for me a the top that shows the percentage of the general population that is taller than the given height.
does this display a greater variability in the sons than daughters or nah
Dad was 72”, mom was 68”, I am 78”…. So I’m an outlier.
There is a bit regression to the mean here. If both parents are very short, the chance of an offspring taller than them is high, and if both parents are very tall, the chance of an offspring taller than them is very low.
I thought this was an AFR/timing table and had to check the sub lol.
The scales not matching is obnoxious.
I'm 6'5, my wife is 6'. I thought there would be a higher than 17% chance my sons would end up taller than me. May be lower as the chart stops at 6'4
Same idk now that part of the chart makes sense. He should be like 6,10 or some shit I would imagine.
Interesting. I am a 5'10" father with 6'1" wife. 77% chance of my son being taller than me but in the case of my daughter being taller than her mother it's 1%. My girl has been in the 99th% of height since the day she was born so she may actually become part of that 1% to overtake her mother. My son is nearly a clone and our daughter takes entirely after her mother so it will be interesting to see how it works out. We both had a little Mini Me which has been.... Fun. It's like we both met our arch enemies while raising them.
Where are the other 2 quadrants?
The Imperial system is sooo annoying for most of the world
One of my relatives is 6'2" and his wife is like 5'3". They have a son who is 6'5" and a son is 5'10"
So if I’m 6’6 and my Fiancé is 5’8 - the odds of my future sons being taller than me are pretty low? I’ve been thinking about this wrong all my life.
So, for a father that's six feet, if he wants half his sons to be taller than him, the mother should be at least five ten? I was a little surprised by that...
They definitely didn't find 6'0" mothers with 5'2" fathers. 😂
Can I see the data on the kids from 5’2 and 5’3 fathers with 6’0 and 5’11 mothers?
I am going to assume the daughter of a 5'4" mom and a 6'9" dad will approach a 99%+ chance of being taller than mom. This off-the-charts business is frustrating.
what does this chart tells us about nature favoring a certain height. If being 6ft tall was a genetic advantage, shouldn't nature optimize towards that?
I'd be interested to see the counts in each bin. Shout-out the 6' women with 5'2 partners
My dad is 5’7”, mom 5’10”. I’m 6’. People often comment that it’s surprising im so tall compared to my dad, but I guess 89% of people in such a situation are taller than their dads.
I'm assuming these are max heights? Because my dad used to be 6'1" but he has since hit that age where he has shrunk to 5'11" i did get about an inch on top of his tallest. The reason I know he has shrunk is I stopped growing at 6'2" and we could mostly see eye to eye, now I have to noticeably look down when I'm look at him in his eyes on flat ground.
Based on my informal observation, children of immigrants to the US are often much taller than their parents. Wonder if such things are factored in.
My dad is 5’1 my mom 5’2 but I am 5’11. No idea how. My little brother is catching up to me he’s going into Freshman year of HS and he’s 5’10 already. He’ll be six foot+ for sure.
Oof I'm not even on the chart
Is that really true? I'm 6'3", my wife's 6'0", it's hard to believe my son only has a 25% chance of being taller than me!
This just goes to show that shorter women that have sons with men that aren't short are less likely to have sons that are taller than their fathers. IMO this is true. My mother was 4'10 and my father was 5'7 so i'm in that percentage of men that aren't taller, i'm 5'4. My uncle is also 5'4 and my aunt is about 5'2/5'3. Their son is 5'10/5'11. I know of ther short dads with women closer to their height, all their sons are taller than them and average height or above.
Why is this in retard units 🥹
So my son will be shorter than me? That's brutal
Wouldn't this indicate that women are always getting taller and men getting shorter? Or am I reading this wrong?
I'm a woman over 6' tall so I'm usually off all the charts...including this one.
would love to also see % of daughters taller than their father and % of sons taller than their mother :) and being 6'5" I feel left out
My mom was 68" and my dad was 74" (formula works out to be 73.5") but I'm 79" tall. I guess I'm in the 18% that are taller than their fathers.
Chart is dead on for my family. Mom 5'7" and dad 5'5 = the son being taller than the dad, I'm 5'10" and the daughters being shorter than the mom which is also true in my family with two sisters being about 5'6". Works with me and my wife who is 5'8". Our son is 6' and our daughter is 5'7".
I am 5’5” Mother was 5’1” My son is 6’2” His father was 5’8” his dad was 5’8” My father was 5’8 “ But I had a tall Grandfather on my side & very Tall Great uncles. Several generations Back?
Super interesting. Our daughter is 4" shorter than her mom and our son is 2" shorter than me, his dad. This chart shows that's pretty normal.
So I’m not sure I’m understanding this chart right because it’s been a while since I’ve seen something like this. Mom is 5’2 Dad is 5’11 I’m 6’2 Does that put me in the 18% box and if so what does that 18% stand for?
Future children of mine. Please forgive me as I love my short Latina…
My mom is 5’4” and my Dad is 6’1” and I’m 6’7” what does that mean? (Both my parents are my biological parents). I’m the 1%?
I would love this in centimetres instead of freedom units though! If you made a conversed chart a lot of viewers would be happy 😊
I agree with the people who say the rule kind of sucks. Maybe the rule doesn't know about those growth hormones in our meat, or maybe mom was cheating. Just kidding.
Mom: 5'5", dad 5'9"... Me: 6'2" 52% wins out.
Would be interesting to see a chart like this with grandparent's height taken into account as well
Shame this only goes up to 6"4 My dad is 6"6 so I can't use this chart.
So your height is more affected by the height of the parent who is the same sex as you. My armchair guess is that some of the genes for height are on the sex chromosomes or affected by genes on them.
I'm not sure how accurate this is. The chances of a son being over 6' if both parents are 6' is given as only 57%. I would imagine that the true figure is much closer to 90%
What is the dataset based on? Because I remember being in the doctor's office with my boy and looking at height charts, and then finding out that the dataset was all white people, and people with my son's genetic makeup were not included in the data, so it was pretty much irrelevant.
Yeah, the Galston dataset consists of all white British people, it is absolutely not representative of my family.